Background: Speech perception ability depends on auditory and extra-auditory elements. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is an extra-auditory element that has an effect on the ability to normally follow speech and maintain a conversation. Speech in noise perception difficulty is a common complaint of the elderly. In this study, the importance of SNR magnitude as an extra-auditory effect on speech...

Forty two preschool children referred to a speech therapy department were randomly allocated to receive intensive individual speech therapy or the more traditional once weekly approach. Boys and minority ethnic groups were referred most frequently. Speech therapy improved expression more than comprehension, as measured on Reynell scales. The mean improvements were 0.5 SDs (95% confidence interv...

BACKGROUND Children with multiple disabilities account for a small percentage of implantees in a cochlear implant program, but they remain the most challenging group for which to predict benefit from the implant and for cooperation with habilitation postoperatively. PURPOSE To assess the relationship of pre-implant functional disabilities with postoperative speech perception scores and determ...

Perceptual narrowing is a highly significant development associated with the first year of life. It conventionally refers to an orientation toward nativeness whereby infant's perceptual sensitivities begin to align with the phonetic properties of their native environment. Nativeness effects, such as perceptual narrowing, have been observed in several domains, most notably, in face discriminatio...

otosclerosis is the most frequent cause of conductive hearing loss in patients with intact tympanic membrane. it can be treated by surgery with various techniques. because of limited manipulation and comparably similar results, stapedotomy at present is preferred over other surgical techniques by most surgeons. here we present the operative results of 114 otosclerotic patients who underwent sta...

Stress has effect on speech characteristics and can influence the quality of speech. In this paper, we study the effect of SleepDeprivation (SD) on speech characteristics and classify Normal Speech (NS) and Sleep Deprived Speech (SDS). One of the indicators of sleep deprivation is ‘flattened voice’. We examine pitch and harmonic locations to analyse flatness of voice. To investigate, we compute...